Exercise – Quick studies

For this exercise, I have included a mix of quick ink and brush sketches, conté sketches and quick studies from the start of my life drawing classes.

Ink and brush

In an aim to work freely and boldly, whilst also doing an ink drawing direct without doing the “safe” thing of drawing in pencil first. I worked with a brush rather than a pen to try to get the immediacy and boldness. Out of 10 sketches attempted, the four below are the most successful:

Conté

I tried a few portrait quick sketches using the edge of a piece of Conté pastel (yes, I know it’s not colour, but I was experimenting and only strayed briefly!):

These sketches are more like caricature images and with the last two images, I have captured the old woman from Monty Python!

DVD sketches

I bought Bill Buchman’s DVD ‘Art is an Attitude’ and worked through his tutorials which were interesting.

Some of the better sketches from this are below (some not in colour again, but that was the only conté crayon I had!):

The course was designed to produce more abstract images of the figure and it certainly does that. I will try using some of these techniques when doing my quick sketches at the start of life drawing classes. Of the sketches, I think the ones which are particularly interesting are the ones with simple zigzag lines showing the angles of the parts of the body – this could be particularly interesting to try to translate into a sculpture.

Life drawing sketches

Quick poses from my life drawing classes:

I quite like the effect of three drawings on top of each other, but it gets a bit confused with five.

Check and log

Think about and write up the challenges you met in doing these studies. Has your drawing improved since Part four?

I think the challenge is always in getting the proportions right without having enough time to measure and check what you are doing. I think my figure drawing is improving all the time as I get more confident and more used to believing my eyes!